heart surgery here, but I can certainly give a healthy hunk of beef like Jason a guaranteed sleep.’
Mike fell silent. He stared out over the football ground, his mind racing. What on earth…? An anaesthetist, right on his patch…
‘Look, I’m not asking you to take me on trust here,’ Tessa said, mistaking his expression. ‘Ring my ex-boss on Monday and run through my credentials with him. Don’t take me at face value. I wouldn’t myself.’ Then she grimaced as the phone on Mike’s belt rang. ‘Ugh.’
That was what Mike felt. He didn’t want more work now. Or did he? Maybe he did need an excuse to leave and think things through.
The game was just coming to an end. The siren blared and the field erupted into red and black madness. A hundred car horns hooted. Mike turned away and covered his exposed ear while he talked into the phone.
By the time he’d finished, Tessa was clapping the jubilant players off the field, for all the world as if it was grand final day, she totally understood the game she’d been watching and she’d been supporting these players for years. To Mike’s bemusement, when the losing side ran off the field she greeted them with just the same enthusiasm.
As Mike came up behind her, she turned and grinned at him.
‘OK. I’ve clapped till my hands are sore. Was that another call? Do we need to go?’
‘I need to go.’ It wasn’t that he didn’t want Tessa beside him, he thought. He figured it was just that he needed to get away for a while. He badly needed time to think. ‘Stan Harper’s a sixty-year-old farmer who lives out the other side of Jancourt,’ he told her. ‘He rang to say he’s having chest pain.’
‘Yeah?’ Her smile faded. ‘Heart?’
‘In a way.’ He smiled a trifle bleakly and shook his head. ‘Stan’s wife died six months ago. Since then he gets chest pain every few weeks or so, and he panics. I’ve run the gamut of tests on him and there’s nothing wrong.’
‘But you’ll go anyway.’ Tessa’s face softened.
‘Yeah, well…’ He could get Stan to drive himself in to the hospital. It’d be safe enough. But he knew what Stan really wanted.
Stan wanted Mike to care about him a bit-to fuss like his Cathy had and to tell him he wasn’t alone in the world. He wanted someone to share a beer and stare at a few cows and talk about the outcome of a football match that Stan wasn’t ready to face without Cathy.
‘Yeah, I’ll go, but I do need to go by myself. Sorry.’ He bit his lip at the sound of the words. He sounded surly.
How else was he supposed to sound? He didn’t know. He needed to figure out some way to get things on a solid, sensible footing here, he decided. Maybe he needed to talk to this girl for a while. Yeah. That was it. He needed to know all about her medical training, and he needed to know soon, before he made a decision about sending Jason away for surgery.
‘Tess, I should be back in town by about seven,’ he said slowly, thinking his mental diary through. He wasn’t expected at the shire ball until nine. There was time to talk first, especially if they did it over a meal. ‘There’s some steak in my refrigerator. I’m going out to the shire ball later but, well, we could eat first. Talk about things…’
‘I’d love that.’ She beamed and the thing was settled before he had a chance to say another word-or before he had a chance to decide whether he was totally stupid or not.
‘I’ll meet you in your apartment at seven,’ she said. ‘Unless you need me beforehand. Meanwhile, I’ll stay here and celebrate or commiserate, and then I’ll go and sit with Grandpa a while. But I’ll be there at seven, Mike. Steak sounds fantastic.’
Hell! He felt like he was being steamrollered here, but there was little he could do about it. And maybe…maybe it was what he wanted. ‘I just…need to collect Strop,’ he said weakly. ‘He’s over at the pie tent.’
‘Of course he’s over at the pie tent.’ Tess grinned. ‘I should have known Strop would be here and where Strop would be while he was here. Don’t worry about him. I’ll take him home.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Absolutely. It would be my very great pleasure to take care of your dog, Dr Llewellyn.’
And, as he moved away, Mike swore he heard a faint echo.
‘And it would be my very great pleasure to take care of you.’
Surely he must have been mistaken!
As he’d thought, there was nothing the matter with Stan Harper.
Mike gave him a thorough once-over, but his vital signs were all just as a healthy sixty-year-old’s should be. Stan accepted the verdict with resignation-hell, it was almost as if the man wanted a heart attack-and poured him a beer. They went out to sit on the back verandah to drink it in what was almost becoming a ritual.
‘I missed you at the game,’ Mike told him, staring out over the mountains at the setting sun. ‘Your team lost. They don’t play the same without you holding up the bar and cheering for them.’
‘Or Cathy hooting for all she’s worth in the car,’ Stan said morosely. ‘I know we never stayed together at the footy, but she was always
There was nothing to say to that. Mike took a swig of beer and stared some more out over the paddocks. This was all he could do for this man. To be here. To be a mate.
‘Why the hell don’t you get married?’ Stan demanded suddenly. He filled his glass again and turned his attention full on Mike. ‘A man’s a fool if he doesn’t get married.’
‘Everyone’s different.’
‘Yeah, but you’re not a natural loner. You could do with a good woman.’ Stan eyed Mike with speculation in his eyes. ‘Your mum was a bonzer woman.’
‘Maybe that’s why I don’t get married,’ Mike said uneasily. ‘No one measures up.’
‘There’s good women around. Your mum. My Cathy. You just gotta look.’ Stan frowned into his glass, deep in thought.
At one level Mike welcomed this conversation. It made him uncomfortable, but at least Stan was thinking about something other than his misery.
‘What about this new lady doctor?’ Stan said, and all of a sudden the conversation was totally unwelcome.
‘What about her?’
‘They say she’s a knockout.’
Mike thought of the purple pompoms and could only agree.
‘How about it, Doc?’ Stan demanded. ‘Are you interested?’
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘I’m too busy to be thinking about a love life.’
‘Then think about this girl instead,’ Stan said warmly. ‘Not a love life. A future. A lady doctor as a wife… That’d mean half the workload and someone warm beside you in bed at night. A man’d be a fool to look a gift horse like that in the mouth.’
‘Yeah. A man’d be a fool.’
A man was a fool anyway.
CHAPTER SEVEN
MIKE was late for dinner, but Tess didn’t wait for him. He arrived back at the hospital to find Tess had taken dinner into her own hands. He opened his apartment door, and there she was.
‘What are you doing here?’ He stopped dead at the door, his nose wrinkling in automatic appreciation of the smells wafting toward him.
‘You asked me to dinner-remember?’ She glanced at her wrist. ‘Half an hour ago. Strop and I had the choice of sitting on the doorstep and looking bereft, or taking some action. And looking bereft isn’t our style.’
‘I can see that,’ he said faintly. Bereft? She looked anything but bereft. ‘That’s a great outfit!’
